Forget Googlewhacking, Try Finding a Googlenope

It appears Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post has a little time on his hands. Perhaps a whole lot of time on his hands, as he has penned an article about his quest enter search queries into Google and find no results whatsoever.

Unlike the past craze of Googlewhacking – trying to find keywords that have just a single result in the index – Weingarten has invented a new game, finding phrases with no results at all.

When a phrase cannot be found on Google, I call it a Googlenope. Once a Googlenope is discovered and written about, it is no longer a Googlenope.

Of course, you could cheat at the game, and type in a bunch of “made-up” words, but the trick is to use unlikely word combinations, such as these suggested by Weingarten.

Queen Elizabeth’s buttocks.

Varsity pinochle.

Caviar ‘n’ taters.

Much to Paris Hilton’s embarrassment …

I was helped by the federal government.

Of course, those will now likely have a result, thanks to Weingarten’s post – and this one – but you get the idea.

So, what weird keyword combinations can you come up with, that have no search results in Google? Better yet, anything weird that does bring up a page in Google? (Don’t forget to use quotes to search for the exact phrase).

found one with 1 result: “andy beal raleigh”
and another with 0: “andy beal talks about seo”

Looks like you need to talk more about SEO andy 😉

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

@brian – lol

http://www.distilled.co.uk TomCritchlow

Lol at brian. Nice spot 😉

“andy beal loves penguins” was my first guess. DO NOT ask me why (cos I have no idea :-p )

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

I see I’ve opened up my own can of worms here.

Have at it!

http://morningwoodnews.com Editor

“over-efficient bureaucracy”

http://morningwoodnews.com Editor

and “grand forks crabs”

http://libertango.livejournal.com Hal O’Brien

Editor@5:
“over-efficient bureaucracy”

True. But “efficient bureaucracy” gets 25,900 hits.

Probably a framing problem. Microsoft is an over-efficient bureaucracy, or else they wouldn’t have faced an anti-trust lawsuit. Google might be an over-efficient bureaucracy, if some people’s reactions to Google Street Views is any indication.

The difference between public sector and private sector bureaucracies is merely one of funding — their behaviors are much the same.

http://blog.snipperoo.com Ivan Pope

Googlewhacking is hard. Googlenoping is piss easy. Why? Because it’s fairly easy to come up with a phrase that no-one has ever written online before – you only have to be fairly daft. Just swappng words in short sentences will quickly give you a whole bunch. But finding a combination of words that only one person has ever written online is harder. Why? Because the words have to be to some degree sensible, so that one person has used them, but no others. Googlenoping is just dumb. Oh, that’s a Googlenope. It is easy to thing this do. Oh, that’s another one. It is easy to thing do. That’s also one. See, easy.

http://morningwoodnews.com Editor

Got a googlewhack.

“diamond feet you”

Dan Klein

In the Sunday,8/5/2007,Washington Post Magazine, Gene Weingarten had a follow-up column to his original Googlenopes column. He mentions a new website, http://googlenope.com, which is a reader contest on these. It’s pretty clever; definitely worth checking out.